The articles and essays in this blog range from the short to the long. Many of the posts are also introductory (i.e., educational) in nature; though, even when introductory, they still include additional commentary. Older material (dating back mainly to 2005) is being added to this blog over time.

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

Should the Philosophy of Mind be Constrained by Science?

Philosophy, since
Thales, has always been ‘constrained’ by science. Straight after
Thales, Aristotle was both a philosopher and a scientist. It has also
been the other way around.

Newton was imbued with
the Platonism and the Aristotelianism his age reacted against.

Early 20th century
physicists, like Mach, Poincare and Einstein were either Berkelian
idealists or some kind of Kantian.

So the relation
between science and philosophy has always been a reciprocal one.

Of course there are
many philosophers around today who believe that because the mind and
consciousness are so unlike the things physicists or chemists study
everyday, that the philosophy of science, by definition, must be an a
priori pursuit – even an a priori science!

Although it's often
said that science can’t tell an alien what a colour looks like, or
what a sponge feels like, or even “what it’s like to be a bat”,
surely there are still aspects of the mind that can be known by
science or, more specifically, by neuroscience. So perhaps the best
thing to do is not to highlight the no-go areas of mind and,
similarly, what are the acceptable areas of the study of mind that
the scientist could, and does, tell us about.

It can be said that
science cannot give us any information about ‘phenomenal
consciousness’ – or ‘what it is like’ to smell a rose or
listen to Mozart. Scientists, of whatever discipline, could tell us
which neurophysical factors and features are causally responsible for
all things phenomenal and which even ‘subserve’ mental events and
consciousness generally. Though, the philosopher may argue, none of
this has anything directly to do with the mind.

For example, a
scientist may as well tell us that every time I have, or form, a
mental image of the Cheshire Cat the light is on in my bedroom. Thus
he could reduce my introspective image of such an image to the
physical basis of the electric light and how that light impinges on
my sensory receptors and then enters the nervous system… and,
eventually, ends with a mental image of the Cheshire Cat. Even if it
were the case than an electric light subserves, or were the ‘material
substrate’, of my mental image, no physicist or neuroscientist
could tell me anything about my mental image; or, indeed, anything
about anyone’s mental images. Again, all they could do would be to
tell us the physical substrate of such mental events or states, or
their ‘subveniance-base’. They could tell us no more than this.

However, it may still
be the case that although science doesn't tell us what it is like to
smell some shit or form a mental image of a cat in one’s mind,
there may still be many scientific factors that are relevant to these
aspects of the philosophy of mind. If not these examples, then surely
in other cases in the very wide discipline.

The question is:

What can science
tell us about the mind?

Or,

Can science tell us
anything about the mind?

It became clear,
decades ago, that we can't reduce the mind to the brain; as with the
Identity Theory of mind. It even became probable that no strict
correlations between mental states (or events) and the brain could be
found.

Other philosophers,
such as Donald Davidson (with his anomalous monism)argued that there
are no mind-to-matter (or ‘psychophysical’) laws, or, for that
matter, matter-to-mind scientific laws. Not only that: there are no
mental laws per se.

As for being
‘constrained’ by science, this normative possibility doesn't make
much prima facie sense. Philosophy has often been ahead of
science. (And, indeed, vice versa.) So why should we constrain the
non-empirical and non-experimental speculations of philosophy when so
often in the past philosophy has shown science where it should go
next or when aspects of science have shown little logical or
philosophical sophistication.

Though, of course,
science simpliciter is itself speculative in nature and
scientific hypotheses have been what have pushed science forward. So
even if the philosophy of mind is still aprioristic, which, in most
cases it isn’t, there would still be no good reason, vis-à-vis
science, to place constraints on the philosophy of mind or on any
area of philosophy for that matter.

Of course neuroscience
has told us many things about the brain. And also, indirectly, many
things about the mind itself. It has told us things about mental
illness, ‘blind sight’, the nature of colour vision, our
cognitive faculties and which component parts of the brain subserve
them, and so on.

Again, or the science
of psychology can tell us about mental illness. Here again,
psychologists don't need to know much about the neurochemical nature
of the brain to empirically observe the behaviour of the mentally
ill. Blind sight, at least in some cases, can be shown to be the
result of brain damage or cognitive failures in the synaptic regions
of the neurons. Colour vision is well studied by physiology and
neuroscience. Though, again, a scientist can't tell us what the
colour blue looks like or what it is like to suffer the shits.